222 PART IV. The Executive

constitutional problem if some examples are given of the kind of
function which has been entrusted to such bodies. It is only
by surveying the field that any conclusion can be drawn whether
or not their existence tends to the establishment of a fourth arm
of government, whose functions cannot aptly be fitted into the
traditional pattern of executive, legislative and judicial.

In the first place there are a number of authorities which ad-
minister purely governmental services and make discretionary pay-
ments out of public funds. Such are the National Assistance Board
and the War Damage Commission, which, while subject to Treasury
direction in general matters, exercised a wide discretion whether the
owners of buildings destroyed or damaged by enemy action should
receive a value payment or a sum based on the cost of the work
of restoration or repair.

In a comparable category are the authorities, such as the Blijish
JCpuncil and the Arts Council of Great Britain which receive grants
from public funds to "expend at their discretion on cultural activities.
Arguments which are valid for condemning the use of agencies not
responsible to Parliament in a field so susceptible of political con-
troversy as unemployment relief cannot be readily sustained against
their use where questions of taste are paramount. So far as the
British Broadcasting Corporation is an organ for entertainment and
culture it belongs to this category.

It is, however, with the third category of independent boards that
the constitutional lawyer is most concerned! The production of coal,
the railways and other related transport services, the production and
distribution of electricity a&d gas, the overseas air-transport sej^ofies
and for a short period the production and distribution of iron and,,
steel, have all since the end of the Second World War, been entrusted
byTParliament to public^corporations. Nor is this list exhaustive*
T»-T—4.g QW£ersi1ip fJas disappeared Qn^,each,'corppr^tiQa operates
.$ra&duLtEe stimulus of competition (except in the

case of air routes served by foreign air Unes)ltThe board of directors
responsible t6 the shareholder who looks for financial results has
been replaced by responsibility to Parliament, as representing the
Exchequer, which contributes the capital and may have to bear the
losses on working, and to the consumer public. There is no rigid
pattern for the constitution of these corporations, but in all the Acts
' which have created these authorities there are to be found provisions
which recognise that it is in the long run only through a Minister of
the Crown that responsibility to Parliament can be adequately
enforced. This is not the place to examine the constitution of each
corporation. The pattern which has emerged so far is that as
Minister has the power to appoint and in certain conditions to dismiss
members of the corporation itself; after consulting the corporation